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The nation's former chief law enforcement official was charged, too, with lying to Senator Sam Ervin's Watergate committee in his public testimony last July. The indictment contends that he falsely denied having even heard about the existence of the Gemstone wiretap transcripts when it was suggested on June 19, 1972, that they be destroyed.
He said, moreover, that "to the best of my recollection" the destruction of documents was not even discussed at a meeting he attended on that date—a statement that the indictment also charges was false. Another part of the indictment charges that it was Mitchell who suggested the destruction.
Haldeman, too, is accused of perjury in his Senate testimony. He denied having been aware that money formerly under his control and later paid to the Watergate defendants was meant as blackmail or hush money. He testified that at the key March 21 meeting attended by Dean (and Nixon, though the indictment does not say so), he did not believe that Dean had made any reference to Jeb Magruder's having committed perjury. Both statements, the indictment says, were untrue.
Ehrlichman's untruthfulness surfaced, according to the indictment, before both the grand jury and FBI agents. The indictment cited Ehrlichman's claim to FBI agents last July 21 that he knew nothing about the Watergate break-in beyond what he had read in newspapers. Also noted were a series of answers that he gave the grand jury last May, in which he could not recall when he first learned that Liddy might have been involved in the breakin. The questions seemed to show that investigators have proof that Dean had told Ehrlichman of Liddy's involvement shortly after the Watergate arrests. Ehrlichman was also accused of lying in his conversation with Kalmbach about raising money for the defendants. He spoke falsely, claims the indictment, when he said he could not recall giving Kalmbach approval to use money for that purpose.
The clearest indication of how active the grand jury was in the questioning of witnesses came in the charge that Gordon Strachan had responded falsely in a grand-jury appearance in June of 1972. He was pressed closely by Foreman Pregelj and an unnamed juror about his admitted delivery of the $350,000 in cash to LaRue. Strachan contended that he gave the money, which had been controlled by Haldeman, to LaRue only for him to return it to the Nixon re-election committee. But jurors wanted to know why he carried it in a briefcase at night to the apartment of LaRue in stead of taking it to committee headquarters near the White House in the daytime.
The indictment contends that statements by Strachan that he did not recall who told him to give the money to LaRue were false. The implication was that the grand jury believes that Strachan was protecting someone — probably Haldeman — who knew that the money was to be sent to LaRue for payoffs to the burglars. The grand jury presumably has evidence of who that unnamed person was.
Despite the mass of detail, the handing up of the indictment and the sealed grand jury report took only twelve quick minutes in Judge Sirica's courtroom. When it was over, most of the defendants either refused comment or expressed their certainty that they will be cleared of all wrongdoing when all the evidence merges in the impending trial battles among